SU800, CLS, and Alien Bees (Setup Pics and Result Pic added!)

I picked up an AB800 this week, and I've been playing around with it over the past couple of nights.

I discovered that the SU-800 will trip the AB800...the IR pulse from the SU800 is enough to trigger the slave cell on the back of the AB800...BUT...it needs to be line of sight...that is, the front of the SU800 needs to "see" the back of the AB800...so for my shooting, it doesn't work from a practicality perspective...I'm generally shooting just about horizontal to my key light...

But, here's what I did instead...

I setup my fill SB800 (group A on my SU800) behind me by about 3' and above me by about 3', bounced into an umbrella and then into the ceiling. I setup my hairlight SB800 in a softbox behind and above my model, and my background SB800 behind the model and pointed up at the background. My AB800 was camera right, about 5' from the model in the new foldable 47" octabox from AB, set at about 1/2 power. This gave me f8 for my key, f9 overall.

When I fired my D200, the SU800 fired all of the SB800s, and the flash from my fill light fired the AB800.

The best of all worlds! I had f8 from my key light (I was only able to get f4 when I shot my SB800 into a softbox), and I could control all of the other lights remotely to adjust output. The color temperature was close enough between the AB and my SB800s.

Here is what my steup looked like. The AB800 is to the right in the 47" octabox, and there is an SB800 in the small softbox behind the backdrop.

Here is a shot looking back to where I took the picture, and you can see the AB800 to the left and my fill SB800 above and to the right.

And here's the end result...shot at ISO100, 1/250, f7.1. Next time I'll raise the AB a little...the catchlights are too low on his eyes.

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